Re: autoconf: feature request: test for GCC version

[Philip Prindeville]

> On Jul 25, 2018, at 1:05 PM, R0b0t1 <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 1:46 PM, Philip Prindeville
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> [snip]
>> Well, because I do a lot of cross-compilation and never get to actually run 
>> most of the programs…
>> 
> 
> So... to add to this, the vast majority of autoconf tests I see in the
> wild are horribly broken and do not support cross compilation. The
> ones that do for some reason check the software on the build machine
> (as that is all that is available) and use it to infer what the target
> machine will support. Running the binaries with qemu-user in a chroot
> is an expensive solution in terms of time and not usually viable -
> even if you did do this you are testing the features of qemu-user and
> the chroot, not the target system.
> 
> The philosophy outlined by Mr. Blake doesn't work anymore. There are
> an increasing number of systems that are not meant to self-host and
> will probably never self-host. In this case it only makes sense to
> specify the required features manually or to infer them from program
> versions.
> 
> Cheers,
>     R0b0t1


There’s nothing there that I disagree with.

-Philip